


Void

by coffeehousehaunt



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alt!Torchwood, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Jealousy, Pete's World, River Song/Rose Tyler - Freeform, River Song/Rose Tyler/TARDIS, Rose Tyler - Freeform, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Younger River Song, river song - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 02:32:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeehousehaunt/pseuds/coffeehousehaunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River wants to meet her competition, the TARDIS has a message for Rose, Rose is smarter than River gives her credit for, and then something entirely unexpected happens. And of course, Torchwood's involved. Bloody wankers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Void

**Author's Note:**

> *All* the credit to kwanboa for her idea of the TARDIS loving and missing Rose in the fic "Hold My Heart"; it was a lovely detail that seemed too good not to use. I read it, and the plot bunnies bit me.

It's like the blonde woman doesn't think she notices her. She's standing _right there_ , not particularly trying to hide the fact that she's been tailing her all day, and maybe most of the other people there aren't paying attention (at least one thing in this universe stayed the same: most humans are bloody unobservant), but she's Rose bloody Tyler and it's so obvious that she doesn't think she's observant enough to notice her watching that it's a bit insulting. Makes her want to smash something, really. Head of bloody Torchwood can't tell when someone's tailing them? You could'a paid a professional. 

It comes back into play like a muscle that's been left sitting for too long (been a quiet few weeks, oddly, but this probably means that they're over), and when she cuts down the alley, three left turns just for good measure, she can feel those muscles stretch, giddy. Of all those things she's lost, those instincts stayed, kept her in the fight, drew her to Torchwood. Instincts he taught her to listen to. There's no such thing as a coincidence. Part of her thinks she's just gone a bit paranoid, itching for something to happen. 

Part of her thinks, _god, it's about time. What the fuck you up to?_ She knows which one to listen to. 

The woman shows up, still following, almost leisurely, poking through stands, almost lost in the crowd, but definitely there. Lazy, almost insolent, to Rose's trained eyes. _God, who d'you think I am?_ There's something about her. Literally, about her; she can feel it like an aura around her. She can't place it, but it's infinitely familiar, like a scent, touches her and she can feel her muscles weaken like she's dying of thirst for it. Dances around the edges of her awareness, and she thinks she'd've been able to place it a few years back. A word that falls out of your vocabulary when it falls out of use, and won't come to your tongue as immediately as it used to when you need it. And it makes her waver, for a moment, the thought that even at the cutting edge (sometimes literally) of Torchwood, those instincts she'd honed so fine, that _he'd_ helped her refine, have atrophied somehow. 

And then it just makes her mad. 

She doubles back, circles around, loses herself in the crowd. Studies her. She's disarmingly gorgeous, she has to admit, if about old enough to be her mother. Sinfully thick honey-blonde curls everywhere, brilliant green eyes that move with otherworldly awareness. And very fashionably dressed. She can see the blonde check around, though, covertly, obviously losing her, and it makes her even madder to see that she's doing it proper, it's apparent that she's been trained. 

_Dunno who you are, but I'm not the bimbo you were promised._ Those otherworldly eyes aren't as sharp as they seem. 

She pops up next to Blondie, voice low enough to keep it just between them. No need to cause a scene. Yet. 

"Word of advice. You wanna follow someone, at least pull that hair back. You're taller than the men out here, walkin' 'round with that bush on your head." 

The surprise on her face is bloody gratifying. She opens her mouth to say something, but Rose wags a finger at her. "I'm Rose Tyler, but you'd know that already. Come on back with me, and we'll find out who you are." It's a risk, taking a stranger back to base, but they don't have to go all the way in. And anyways, there's always Retcon. 

She'd get a sick kind of glee out of that, for this one, she thinks. 

* * *

"I'm here to... learn about him." It's entirely innocent, the way she says it, but there's something about it that makes Rose think of John, back home, getting ready to leave for the UN, wonder where he is, brings her hackles up in a rush. The wolf tells her maybe she wasn't the point of this whole game, and she's playing right into Song's hands. She tries to keep her cool. 

"Look, Miss... Song, yeah?" Her voice is just as innocent when she pretends to forget her name. "We're Torchwood, not a school. What d'you want with us?"

That smirk just grows. "You're the one who brought me here, sweetie. I was only following you." _Shit_. 

So she goes with the grand tour, extending one hand towards the rest of the warehouse in a grand gesture of invitation. "Torchwood Institute. Founded by Queen Victoria to combat the threat posed by off-world invasion, beginning with... the Doctor. Not exactly the most friendly place for someone looking to "learn about him" to end up, _sweetie_. Trust me, I was there." Okay, so technically, her dad founded it to combat the Cybermen, but she knows well enough what Torchwood was in her universe, and she doesn't like _Doctor_ Song. It's one thing to be interested in the Doctor; it's another to want to become him. It's no coincidence that she turned up on Rose's doorstep, either, she realizes. 

"Really?" Song's voice is disarmingly mild. "I'd heard it was founded right after the Cybus Industries catastrophe." Well, that was quite hard to cover up. There was no cover-up, really. 

"There's been quite a few... versions... of it, over the years." Is all she allows. 

Maybe it's the lack of response to her use of the word "versions", something in the steady, calm look Song fixes on her, the ease with which she meets her eyes, or something in those eyes themselves, something so much older than her body gives away, but something clicks and she knows what that "aura" is. 

Her hands clench on the desk she's leaning on, and she feels faint. "Y'know, sweetie," her voice is softer than she means it to be, but at least it's not giving away the raw, spinning feeling in her stomach. She hopes. "You wanna convince me you're from around here, you shouldn't walk into my house reekin' of the Time Vortex." 

The look Song gives her says it all. 

Her teammates from this side of the Void look back and forth between them, completely bewildered. 

"How'd you get through?" Everything's narrowed down to just between them, now. Teammates be damned. 

"One-way ticket," Song replies. "Unless I can gather the right materials. Which, there's no guarantee that they even exist on this side, so I brought some of my own. Enough for one person." The meaning is clear, hovers in the air. 

Time was, she would've been irritated that anyone would've laid any claim to her Doctor at all. After she met Sarah Jane Smith, though, she started to realize what it meant, to live nearly forever, and she couldn't grudge him how he dealt with it, even if it hurt. But part of her... she has John, and she's told herself a million times that that's enough, but it's not him. She's just on a long-term assignment, to use the military jargon she's picked up since joining Torchwood. For the rest of her life. She tries not to use the words _bitter_ or _heartbroken_ or anything so cliché to describe herself--she hasn't had a breakup, or a divorce, or anything so petty--but when the cracks in the Void sealed, something like cracks spidered through her, and she catches ghosts coming through them when she's out on missions, talking to her team, at home with John. They hang around, haunt, until she's comparing the fluorescent lights reflected on her guns to the light of the stars, seeing constellations in the awestruck, short-lived lights in the eyes of the new recruits when they find themselves in a larger world than they ever dreamed possible and then, all too often, die, knowing that this constant battle is the closest thing she has to the real thing without the TARDIS. That unnameable thing, shot through with starlight and glistening with awe. It looks different seeing Song from the other side of the equation. She feels old, looking at her. Somewhere between stale bread and more horribly adult than she's ever felt before. It's hard to be irritated when you know the score. When you know you've been left behind. 

Now, she's more irritated that this woman feels the need to cross the Void and piss on her marriage to feel like she really owns him, ruin all she has left of the best years of her life to prove a point. It's not like either of them will be the first, and they ceratinly won't be the last, though _Doctor_ Song certainly seems to think she will be. _Yeah, I thought that too, once._ It's a whole new level of weird, she thinks, that this woman needs to go to a different dimension entirely to cement her hold on the Doctor. Not to mention insecure. 

She can feel the wolf growl, looking into those oh-so-human green eyes, watching an alien intelligence move in them. At first, when she'd first met the Doctor, she'd thought it looked like sparks, like multiples of the gleam in a human eye. Made sense, right, since he had more than one life? But over time, the image resolved, and she saw the Vortex spinning, an afterimage of something, something pressing against her skin from the inside, burning, something she barely remembers. A billion billion possibilities, winking out and blinking into existence before his eyes. _I can feel the planet spinning beneath us, at 27,000 kilometres per second. And more. What might happen if I just... stepped off. That's what I am._ First thing he ever really told her. Looking into River Song's eyes, she knows the professor sees it, too. They regard each other, Rose and the wolf looking into Professor River Song's eyes, Song looking back. She sees it register in that bright green gaze. 

"You really did it." Song's voice breaks the silence, just a little bit awed. "You looked into the heart of the TARDIS, and she looked back into you. I can see it. Like water marks after a flood." The possessiveness is gone from her gaze, the challenge. She's just looking at Rose like she's never really seen her before. It's Rose's turn to return her gaze with an even stare. 

She remembers something, words, like an echo. Everything must come to dust. Because she feels like she needs to prove a point, she says, "I turned them all to dust. Ran the Vortex through the Emperor of the Daleks and all his fleet. I ended the Time War once and for all." She feels even older, suddenly, when she feels her team still staring at her like she's some kind of alien, realizing there's things about her that they don't know and can't comprehend. 

She turns to them, just a bit irritable. "Y'know, your faces'll freeze like that if you're not careful. You wanna be draggin' your jaws around the rest of your lives?" She can feel Song smile at that. _Oh good, glad I'm so_ amusing _to you_. They close their mouths at the same time and try very hard to appear busy. She turns back to the time traveler in front of her. She doesn't much care what she wants, suddenly, or why she's here. She's angry, sure, feeling rather pissed on, but there's Vortex spilling from her clothes with every movement, that gaze that's so very Time Lord, so unearthly alive. Curiosity gets the better of her this time, like it used to every time, and it surprises her. But she reminds her of him, and the TARDIS, and the Vortex, and that thirsty feeling returns. Her chest aches. Much as John's like him, she knows there's something missing. He's too human, some days; his hair's going gray in patches, and often he's simply exhausted when he comes home from whatever project it is he's working on. His speech is different, part Donna, and so are other quirks about him, in the way he thinks, his exuberance and his tendency to over-share in ways that are utterly unlike her close-mouthed Time Lord. Her Doctor, she loved him for how incredibly alien he could be; he always said that humans looked Time Lord, not the other way round, and sometimes John and the rest of humanity seems like just that, the shell of a Time Lord, missing all those sparks. She looks into River Song's eyes and sees the alien, those eyes fuller than the world around her. Abruptly, she wishes he were here just so she could slap him, for taking all that away from her, like it was any of his business to make the choice for her. 

Sure, Torchwood needs her. Sure, there are Cybermen, a world to save. Worlds, even, once the TARDIS finishes growing. But she didn't realize until she tasted the Time Vortex radiating from this woman's skin how much she was still missing. The word finds its way to her lips again. 

"Who are you?" It's not a demand; there's really no point in that, now. This woman will do what she wants, more or less. _God help you if you cross any of those lines, though._

Her smile is almost as old as her eyes. "The child of the TARDIS." 

* * *

Unfortunately, her earlier feeling about the period of quiet they'd entered being over turned out to be correct. Within the day. Various Cyberform devices had infiltrated the Torchwood warehouse and activated shortly after Song arrived. Unfortunately, they were inanimate to begin with, so there was no use trying to exploit their previous emotions--they had none. It was a bit of a shock when the Torchwood computer systems--and some of their personal electronics--began trying to convert their all their agents into Cyberform simultaneously. Six had been killed when their conversion failed, and another six were successfully converted, if only partially, and had to be, in their vocabulary, "put down". Five of them were new recruits, within sixty days of starting there. 

There would have been significantly more casualties, though, if River Song hadn't been there. She fought brilliantly, Rose had to admit, and was key in winning the fight, although it was Rose herself who ended the fight when she ran a corruption code they'd been developing as a contingency in case something like this ever happened. It was enough to shut down the devices, but they were compromised and had to be destroyed. And then there were the converted agents. Six partially converted Cybers were enough to cause havoc for a good while, but River brought them down with astonishing speed. River actually seemed to be enjoying the action, which endeared her to Rose in a way she couldn't place. Maybe it reminded her of something long-gone. 

Fighting by someone's side was, she'd come to realize, a quick way to feel close to someone, even if they were a relative stranger. River was no exception to this, and actually seemed considerably warmer towards Rose after the fact, when Rose found a seventh partially-converted agent and, rather than putting her down, assessed that she was potentially capable of being "rehabilitated", and sent her to a deadlocked facility with minimal electrical and computer equipment and cut off from all main power grids to have her implants removed and the programming erased from her brain. Rose was still numb from the fight (she never had been good at killing people, although she'd had to get better at it with the tactics the Cybers used; she still refused to call what they did to partial-conversions anything but executions, though), but once cleanup was done, she'd offered to show River the TARDIS they'd grown in their backyard. Bad attitude or no, she traveled with the Doctor, and that meant something about her, so when she didn't leave Rose to die in the firefight, she figured River could live with her feelings and would probably love to see their TARDIS. And, with any luck, could potentially help them get it working. Maybe the Vortex energy from the other side of the Void would come in handy. It was, at the very least, strangely soothing to Rose; she felt better around it than she had in quite a while, and it seemed a shame that it came in such an unfriendly package. Her senses seemed to wake up, although that was maybe more to do with her being a time-traveler and the general absence of Vortex energy in this universe than it did with her being somehow incompatible with this universe. 

When they got to their house, though, Rose began to have second thoughts, and was glad that John was already at the UN for a conference. 

"She knows you." Rose comments, watching River slide her hand down the TARDIS growing in the backyard that their combined salaries more than paid for, tracing the grain of the blue wood. It grew in like that, no stop at a natural wood color. Her hair's falling back from her face in a way that's both glorious and, Rose has realized, typical for her, and she's looking at the nearly-grown TARDIS like it's a miracle. And it is. 

"She taught me how to fly her." Her voice is still awed, and she doesn't look away from the TARDIS, tracing her hand over it. Rose has to stop the giggle from finding its way out. She really is a lot like him. 

"Let me know if you two, ah, need a moment." Song looks at her like her snark's surprising. Rose twitches one eyebrow at her and bites her tongue, and she laughs. 

"I can't do this when he's around. He gets jealous of her." 

It's an accurate statement. "Right? I think everyone who's really traveled with him got to love her, though." 

"How could you not?" River looks over at her, smiling warmly, then back at the not-quite-finished TARDIS. "She told me about you, you know. Showed me. How you looked into her heart and held the Time Vortex inside you. You opened yourself up to save him. He thinks about it, too, still. All of his companions came to love the TARDIS, but very few of them looked into her like you did."

Rose feels her skin heat at the word choice and the tone in River's voice. It isn't far off, though she doesn't actually remember it, but she makes it sound almost sexual. "That makes it sound a bit intimate. Really, I almost died. Don't even remember it, either, 'cept for what he's told me." 

That smile widens, and for some reason, it makes a shiver run over her skin. "It was, for her. And he still thinks it was one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen. He can't forget it." 

_Ah, that's why you're here_ , she realizes, and it makes her feel a bit better about all this. "He didn't tell you that. He'd never admit it." He wouldn't, either. This is starting to feel more like talking to Sarah Jane than it is to the possessive time-travelling woman who'd been tailing her earlier. Whatever she originally intended, it seems to have changed, which is a relief beyond words. She knows, after that firefight, that River wasn't even trying earlier when she was tailing her, and she doesn't want to go toe-to-toe with her. Why she wanted to bait her, she isn't sure, but it probably had something to do with a burning desire to piss her off, which seems to have passed. 

"No, but I'm part Time Lord. We're telepathic." They look at each other and burst out laughing. And something in her loosens; she remembers how the word "love" caught in his throat. _You humans, you... decay._ It would've been an insult, from anyone else. Without the ache in his eyes. 

"How close is she?" Rose asks. "John reckons she's nearly done, but for some reason, she's not running proper. Needs fuel, needs energy... It's like there's a spark or something missing, he says." 

"He'd be right." River's still examining it. It looks done, from the outside, but it feels eerily quiet, even to Rose. "She's far from dead, but most of the telepathic fields aren't on-line yet, and it needs to be hooked up to a power source to jump the engines and core systems. And the engines do need to be calibrated." She flashes her a grin. "She is nearly done, though. Beautiful thing." 

"Takes after her mother, yeah?" 

"At least until the Chameleon Circuit completes. Assuming your husband doesn't wreck it from the get-go." 

"He would do that." 

"Yes, he would." There's something in that smile, the speed and ease of her response, like she knows exactly what Rose means. It's entirely too smooth, the way "your husband" falls from her lips. She wonders again what he's gotten up to, in that other universe of his. 

"So." 

River turns to her, smile touched with a question. "So?"

"How is he?" 

"Regenerated." She smiles wider, and Rose can see her light up. It makes her hurt, a little bit, that this woman is so obviously in love with him, so confident she's going to get her way, but then, she supposes, she looked like that, too, at one point. "He had quite a day and then took a fatal dose of radiation to keep a nuclear reactor from melting down, so he had to regenerate. Crashed in the backyard of a leggy Scottish ginger who happens to be my mum--that's a long story in and of itself--and he's been gallivanting about ever since, more or less as usual." 

"As usual as it ever gets with him." She feels her heart contract when she hears that he regenerated-- _one more loss_ \--but she sill can't help but smile. 

"As usual as it gets." River agrees, smiling wider. She sees something in her face, though, and becomes sympathetic, which is odd, considering the terms they met under. "He would've said his goodbyes to you, and I'm sure he found a way to do it, but you were..." 

"I know." She wraps her arms around herself. How would he have said goodbye to her? She racks her brains a bit, then realizes she's probably being rude. "So, you wanna see the inside?" 

* * *

"Oh, this is beautiful." River turns around in circles, admiring the still-growing internal architecture. "You're brilliant, you are." Rose knows she's talking to the Doctor's TARDIS. 

And she has to agree; this incarnation looks organic, almost, or maybe that's just the fact that it hasn't quite finished growing yet. The exposed wiring pulses faintly with a coppery light, tendrils of energy that look similar to the Doctor's regenerative energy but not quite the same color. It lights the control room in a flickering glow, like firelight. It seems to pulse brighter in response to her words, like it recognizes her, maybe even blushing at the compliment. There's Gallifreyan writing on the walls, down the support pillars. It looks ancient, graceful, and comforting at the same time. Like a home, a den. Gorgeous and organic and sexy. 

"I come out here when I miss home." Her voice echoes, a little bit, and she can hear the unwonted hollowness in her tone. Longing. Bloody hell. She'd been trying not to go there. "This is part of her, you know. I miss her, too. But this helps me miss her less, 'cos I know this is part of her, and she's part of him." She meets River's gaze, and the sympathy in those eyes makes hers well up. She looks down in a miserable attempt to hide it. Some good at being tough she is. Little bit of artron energy and she turns into a puddle. 

"She misses you, too. So does he. He's awful about it, but he does." She can hear the smile. It's not mocking, or syrupy-sympathetic. 

Rose looks up at her, sniffles, and bursts out laughing again. "I know. Bloody wanker always thinks he's gotta make the tough calls. And then he never forgives himself for it." 

River laughs, too. "No, he never really does. And he never moves on, either. All of eternity and he just tries not to think about what he's left behind." She looks sidelong at Rose for a moment, studies her. "I have something for you, from her. If you want it." There's a slight knowing smile on her face, a suggestion that makes Rose's skin heat again. She knows who "she" is, and she thinks she knows how River means to give it to her, and it makes her stomach flutter. "She told me to ask you when I saw you next. Didn't know why, at the time, but I do now." 

Her voice seems to catch in her throat. It's not that John would mind; he wouldn't. They've been over this before, and he doesn't do jealousy like most humans do. And she's slept with more than her fair share of recruits. And she doesn't normally go for women, but she's snogged a few before and River is... well, River. One day with her and she knows exactly why the Doctor likes her so much. "Yeah? What's that?" It comes out breathy when it's supposed to be daring. 

River moves around the console towards her, until she's inches away from Rose. "This." She reaches up and threads her fingers through Rose's hair, and Rose has to fight not to tremble. There's Vortex energy spilling off her skin, still, and she's standing there with that gorgeous mouth and a message from the TARDIS, the one who said she loved her. Despite all her years at Torchwood, she has to close her eyes. 

River's mouth finds hers, and it's like a shock running through her from head to foot. She catches at River's shoulders, lets her tongue in, drinks in the artron energy and the warmth of her mouth and River's sure, deep movements with all the force of that ache in her chest. She feels inexplicably _right_ , a piece of the world she'd missed for so long she forgot that there was anything besides the missing. She makes a small sound of protest when River begins to pull away, and, faintly, hears her chuckle. The sound of it makes muscles deep inside her clench, and she doesn't care anymore why she's here or who she is or what her game is. She just wants her to kiss her again, so she can taste home on her lips. It doesn't hurt that she's _very_ good with those lips, the sureness of someone moving at a pace entirely removed from the human sense of time and entirely drunk on the headiness of it all. She knows that kiss. 

She feels River like a presence at the edge of her thoughts, like she felt the TARDIS day in and day out once she became aware of it. Like she feels this one, now, growing stronger every day. She opens her eyes. River's there, pulled back, eyes glowing golden with that same energy that seems to bind the TARDIS together. _His_ TARDIS. 

She doesn't know how to say it in her head anymore, so she says it out loud: "Please." There's no bravado in it, just rawness. 

That glow invades her eyes, permeates her vision, sheathes everything in living light. And she can feel River in all of it, River a sheen over everything, looking out of her eyes with her. Holding something in it; a seed, maybe. It opens, blossoms in her mind, as River's mouth presses against hers. 

It's like there's a singing at the core of her being, from everywhere and nowhere at once. That voice familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, and it had been so long since she'd heard it last. The singing of time itself. The singing of the TARDIS. It doesn't burn her, this time; holds back and enfolds her. She sags in River's arms with a sound that's half-sob, half-something else. Every cell in her body is singing, soaring to the voice she thought she'd never hear again. His other half. There's no words, maybe even no sound, something vibrating at a frequency far outside what human ears can hear. But she can hear it; she's travelled in the Vortex, let it run through her like a wildfire, been changed by it. In that song, she hears the TARDIS unfolding across all of time and space, so far away, and it whispers how it will always hold her in those few precious moments she existed there, fleeting and fierce, how her eyes will always be looking into her heart, somewhere. She remembers herself, though she doesn't remember it herself, scintillating demand and primal urgency and she remembers how it felt to let herself be held inside her tiny, fixed body. Feels her love from a outside herself. _It always was and always is and always will be._ And she understands that it's like that for him, too, but without the consolation of existing across all of it simultaneously, a song stitched from the wave-form crescendoes and dissonances of creation. It will always be beginning, and it will always be ending, and it will always seem like it never ends. It will always be over, forever. 

And they will always be missing her. _She_ will always be missing her. Sad that no more adventures will unfold with them. 

The light folds around her. Tendrils of pure delight. _Hello_ , it sings. 

_I've been waiting so long to give you this._

She becomes aware, distantly, that she's crying against River's mouth, or crying out. Aware of the hand tracing slowly over the seam of her jeans, the arm holding her steady against the console, of the TARDIS inside her, her inside the TARDIS, the TARDIS seeing itself through her. River seeing them both, seeing it with them and alongside them and as them. It's overwhelming. It feels like coming home. 

She looks into her own eyes, overflowing with light and tears, _I want you safe. My Doctor._ Her eyes, looking into the open heart of the TARDIS, ripped wide open, pleading, searching. _I want him safe. Our Doctor. Help me save him. Please._ She looks out at her own desperation, watches her tears fall. She feels the answer. How could it have been anything but yes? 

She feels the yes rather than hears it; the only thing she's aware of is infinity fusing itself into her body. Somewhere, she's aware that this is just an echo, that the reality would burn her up and she wouldn't be able to have this memory any more than she was able to keep it the first time. _That's what I see! Every second! Doesn't it just drive you mad?_

_I want you safe_ , the TARDIS says through her mouth, with her words, speaking with her want, _My Doctor. Safe from the false god._ She doesn't remember sharing her mouth like this with anyone, and it's amazing because it's not superimposed, not a telepathic invasion or possession; they are harmonized, completely, wanting the same thing, hearts beating entrained for a few eternal moments. It's better than kissing. More intimate than sex. There's awe, and she's not sure if it's her, because she doesn't remember this high, not sure how she could've forgotten, or if it's River watching the memory unfold, or the TARDIS' own empathy, awed by the capacity of this tiny creature standing before it, needing. Willing. Broken open, like the console, begging for her to look inside and see. So she gives her her eyes. Places her heart in her chest, and Time itself is in her heart. For a few moments, she becomes part of infinity, or infinity becomes part of her, and she directs it like a symphony, writes it as it's played. Or, it plays her hands, and it writes her into this room, into those moments, graffitis her into being just like this, until it's brought her here, raw and desperate, just so it can place itself into her mouth. Using and being used, want on want. Who can tell which came first? She can feel her legs wrapped around River, ass on the console, one of River's arms curved around her back holding her up and her other hand moving inside her, touching places she hasn't been able to find herself. And part of that sound is her, moaning, maybe even screaming, not just every cell in her body singing. 

It took her a long time after that to remember that they've always shared him, every one of them, with her, she remembers. She was such as stupid kid, she thinks for a minute, to not realize sooner that this living ship, it loved him first, that if he stole the TARDIS, then it also stole him for herself, and it made room for them all inside her. They were mirror images of each other, the Time Lord and his TARDIS. The TARDIS and her Time Lord. They both wanted her there, needed her there. The TARDIS-fragment in River's mind smiles and sings something reassuring, something that falls into a form like, _you weren't stupid, just rules you didn't know yet. Now you get to remember. Now she gets to remember._

_I've just been waiting to tell you._

She sees something else, now, too, the ghost of her hands sliding into someone's hair, along a narrow jaw, still-warm skin. This is somehow familiar, too, similar. Holding her body on the console, like this, telepathic energy dancing over them like living flame. There's a glow, golden as that energy that consumed her Doctor all those years ago, and she's not sure if it's here or in the memory or both. He's dead, and she breathes life into him, his hearts beating just in the presence of that energy. His hearts. Rose feels one of them hurt deep enough to draw tears. _River, no. What are you doing?_ A man dragged back from death. More than that; a Time Lord. 

_Hello, sweetie._

They danced, round and round, before, death drive, _libido morienti_ , and never-ending life, silence and that never-ending song. Hate crawls up her throat like the tide, but she's not sure for whom; herself, him, the woman touching her, or the woman she's touching. Watches the long list of everything he's ever broken play like the credits of a movie before her conscious mind. When his mind slips back into existence, the first thing they feel is his guilt, stretching all the way back into eternity, locked away in time. It's not that she's wrong to kill him, maybe--he's been waiting for death to find him for lifetimes--but she is wrong about him, and that's enough. 

_You still care._ They're her parents, though they look easily twenty years younger than her, and her mother shoots her a broken look, looks at her like she's a thing, something she doesn't understand and doesn't want to, and she can't blame her. She loves them, clawed her way to their side, and they're crying like their world has ended. Because of her. And she is physically incapable of caring. _Who's River Song?_ All she wants to know is what kind of woman she'd have to be for him to love her; after all these years of existing solely for him, because of him, she barely knows him. 

_Just tell me--The Doctor, is he worth it?_

She's the vengeance of the silenced, and when she kisses him to bring him back to life, she feels for the first time what being a Time Lord means beyond "superhuman", what telepathy means beyond manipulation, what regeneration means beyond cheating death. She opens, and gives everything she has, and they mingle in a way that defies language and human comprehension, spiraling energy and unwinding helices, the _Shiva lingam_ and _Shakti yoni_ , matter and consciousness, and she dances on his body, rides his mind. _The Doctor says I'm the child of the TARDIS._

_The TARDIS is still leaking that toxic smoke, but there are fans somewhere pulling it away. She steps in, hesitant, and sees a brilliant light on the far side of the console. She walks in, looks into it. She has her orders. The light fills her up. She has her orders. She sees everything at once, unfolding inside her like a seed, understands that it knows what she has to do, what she's done, and what's yet to come. And she is forgiven. Always and completely forgiven. And that she hears his last wish, the TARDIS of the last Time Lord, and the Doctor's friends may never seem to listen to him, but they will always honor his last requests, because they are the only thing he has, his friends and his requests and his TARDIS._

I know you. You'll wear many names, but one face. You're mine. Our first meeting face-to-face. Hello, sweetie. 

_She never noticed it before, but the hum of her engines vibrates just slightly in her skin, like her cells are tuned to that frequency._

Rose opens her body's eyes and looks into River's, or opens her eyes and looks into Rose's, and feels it all: rage that this woman who wants to claim him would murder him, that her "love" mostly amounts to an obsession worthy of a horror film, the cracks in her being left by years of brainwashing and torture. Time singing through them both, through all of it. He gave her back a paltry fraction of her humanity after inadvertently creating the perfect target in her; he gave Rose the stars and then stranded her not just on Earth, but on an alien Earth, with no way home. 

And Rose can't hate her. Not when she feels her heartbeats racing against her chest, the vast scars across her mind and soul, how incredibly _stranded_ she is, like her. Something he taught her, that word coming back to her lips. 

_Hope_. Not the helpless, hand-wringing kind of hope, but the kind that believes a world into being, that changes the potentialities of a situation, swings them like a pendulum towards another outcome. The better one. That ethereal thing threading through the stars. It's been a long time since she's had that, but she remembers how it felt now. In their own way, they each know him better than the others. Her Doctor's knowing machine, spread out across time and space, perfection in architecture; her Doctor's guilt, hell-bent and bent to hell, a living reminder of his sins and of himself. Her. Hoping. Believing. Trusting. 

She doesn't think she can give them that. She knows--oh, does she know--sometimes it's not enough, and also how sometimes, it is. Just enough. But she remembers the blood and gunshot residue on her hands, earlier, and she knows why he left her here. She can see the memory play back through another's eyes, look at her eyes pouring hope and shining with love and its sheer power but it's just abstract, now. All her faith's turned grim and gunmetal-black. Whoever that was, it isn't her, anymore. 

The image of her lifts its eyes from the open console. All of infinity burns in them, spills out, too vast for any container. There are stars where her pupils should be. She remembers something the Doctor told her once, _her_ Doctor. _The TARDIS is telepathic. It can show you things. The deepest desire of your heart._

_"Rose Tyler."_ Her Doctor's voice says to her out of her own mouth, echoing in ways no voice ever does. _"I believe in you, Rose Tyler."_

Her image blows her a kiss, and something unspools out of her mouth. Takes root in her chest and blossoms. This is the message, she understands suddenly. _I believe in you._ Like a second heart beating in her chest, until hers entrains with it. _I believe_ in _you_. Roots threading through the cracks; River's lips on the skin over her heart, tongue tracing the hurt places. This time, it's not ghosts welling up through them. _I believe in you._

 _My Doctor._

River's eyes are a thin ring of green around a drowning pupil, and there are tears in them when she looks at Rose. She's panting like she's going to come, or maybe that's just Rose herself, and there's this look on her face like all her clothes have been ripped off in the worst way and she doesn't know what to do with all the things Rose can see now. Rose knows she's about to break, tension singing through her body, River's fingers and the telepathic presence of the TARDIS driving her higher and higher, pleasure and connection and all that accumulated emotion folding back on themselves and building. One of her hands is holding onto River's shoulder, the other gripping the edge of the console, both trembling with the intensity of it all. Somehow, she moves her hand from River's shoulder to tangle it in her hair, pulls until their mouths are almost touching, tightens her legs around River's waist, pulling her even closer, even deeper into her. There's something she has to tell her, something she wants to say to her, something she needs to hear. "River--oh, _fuck_ \--River, I-- _River_ \--" She goes over the edge with River's name on her lips, and everything dissolves into a wordless cry and brilliant gold light, and with her last semi-coherent impulse, she pushes that hope into the link, gives it with her hips and voice and her hand in River's hair and her body clenching around her hand. And then she loses all sense of her self, and falls back into herself. She can see stars. Real stars. Blinking into existence with the ignition of the atoms inside them, dying, exploding, seeding new stars, falling into themselves and becoming black holes. 

She feels River lose it, pulled into orgasm by the telepathic field, feels her collapse forward against Rose and the console, fingers spasming inside her, hears her cry out and every molecule of her body singing throughout time, Time Lord consciousness racing through the link like fire. She can feel her clench, feel how she comes, dropping over the edge into the Vortex with her hand inside Rose's body holding her here, and she thinks it might kill her, feeling both their orgasms and the TARDIS holding them twisting in infinity, in all those infinite moments, all the TARDIS' love for her and her love for him and the TARDIS and her own love through the TARDIS and her need and it hurts, to be this full of everything at once, and so lost in everything at once. 

Distantly, she feels it all multiply and wash through the corridors, which feel more like skin in this pool of telepathic energy than they look, the skin of a body, gold light like the energy that radiates from his body, shines from his eyes when he's inside them. Something cool and alive and waiting just under the surface. 

Just when she thinks it can't get any more intense or she really will die, she hears something, another voice. Different. Singing in infinity. The skin of the ship they've been physically inside, quiet until now, pulses back against their telepathic field, draws it in in a gasp, adds its voice to theirs as it does so. Its glow, pressing against theirs, seeping back in. Most of the pressure is gone, but she's still coming, they're _all_ still coming, washing in temporal and telepathic ecstasy. But it's gentler, now; waves and ripples running through the body of the TARDIS in shivers. She's running her hands through River's hair, kissing her, nails over her skin, beneath her on her back on the console. River is somehow still moving inside her, and it's almost unbearable how good it feels, every move pushing her over the edge, holding her there, and she keeps falling, and she can feel River's orgasm too. Their memories are playing all at once, in the telepathic tangle, and she's all of them, swimming in details she'll hear later and know they sound familiar, but never be quite sure why. Only the TARDIS has the control to keep them separate, keep them from losing anything integral in the process. Rose is amused at the two of them, these small creatures, stray fragments who slip their skin so easily and yet are so lost without it, scattered eddies in the whirl of time, somehow all the more impossibly precious to her Time Lord, who has all the time in the universe, for it; she's achingly naked, unable to stop herself from letting her secrets slip and too caught up in the infinity of it all to even try, shattering in the body beneath her hands and the feeling of her own hands inside someone else's body like it's her own they're touching. She's coming like herself, coming like someone else, coming like some _thing_ else entirely. 

She doesn't realize that the orgasm has ebbed much at all, still stranded in that wash of infinity, until she hears River's voice, distinctly, laughing dazedly, undone, swearing in amazement, feels it vibrating against her body. She realizes she's more in the here-and-now than not, and comes to on her back on the console. She's still got her legs wrapped around River, and she can't quite keep her hips from pushing against her when she feels her voice, breathless and husky and humming low in her chest, against her sensitized skin. She's panting and can't find her fingers or any other limbs through the haze. River is on top of her, pressed between her legs, somehow already having withdrawn her fingers but otherwise having similar difficulties moving. "Oh, that's brilliant, " she's saying, looking at something above Rose's head. "Oh, that's _beautiful_." Rose tries to move, with some success, just move her head so she can see what River's looking at. She realizes there's a humming in the room she hasn't previously noticed, on this visit or any of their other visits. 

The central column, which her head fell back on in the pleasure, has come alive, pulsing with a brilliant blue light, blue and gold swirling around it in sparkling streams. Moving, just slightly, like a resting heart rate. 

"Oh, yes." Her voice is breathless, laughing, as she looks up at the lit central column, propping herself up on unsteady arms, still tangled in Rose's legs. "Oh, brilliant. You clever, clever girl." Rose is fairly sure she's not talking to her. 

"What... Is it alive, now? I mean, it was alive before, but... is it finished?" _Finished_ sounds so mechanical, but she can barely speak at all. 

"Congratulations, Rose Tyler," River says, grinning from ear to ear when she looks at her, "you just helped bring a TARDIS into the multiverse." 

"What, you mean like... birth?" She's just been fucked, literally, senseless; how can River still be talking after feeling that? But this seems to take the edge off that. 

"Exactly like that." River places one hand on the console and begins tracing it lightly with her fingertips, looking over the switchboard. "She must've known that she had to jump-start this one's telepathic field because there was no source on this side of the Void... And she wanted you to be part of it." She fixes Rose with a gorgeous, indolent smile. "Lucky you." 

Her mind is racing, and she's still struggling to catch her breath after that orgasm. Oh, god, it's been far too long since she was inside a TARDIS. A real, live TARDIS. Live. It's _alive_. She looks around, running her trembling hands lightly over the console. The quality of the light is quite a bit different than the Doctor's TARDIS as she remembers it; the light is pulsing copper and blue from the bundles of wires running up the columns, brilliantly blue from the central column. It gives the room a shadowed feel, like a cave in the evening, or just before sunrise. There's still Gallifreyan writing all over the walls, and a bold circle of it around the dome of the room. It's fitting; this one feels like a different creature than the Doctor's TARDIS. She can feel it, too, through that light, that brilliantly shining telepathic field, enfolding them, radiating from them, and back again. She remembers it unfolding from River's mind into hers, radiating throughout the TARDIS with... She blushes, suddenly acutely aware that her jeans are halfway down her thighs and she's bare-assed on the console and... yeah, that's her cum on the console. _Some things don't change, at least._ It's amusing in ways that she hasn't been able to feel in years. 

"It had to be you, though." she realizes it, but it's the presence in her mind that tells her she's not crazy for saying it out loud. "You're telepathic. And you're the child of the TARDIS. You came from its telepathic field." She looks over at River again, who's looking at her like she just said something very interesting indeed. "Now you're the mother of a TARDIS. The TARDIS, since this one's part of the other one. Talk about timey-wimey."

"Oh, story of my life." River says it like it's an inside joke. It makes Rose wonder what the story of her life is. She's only seen pieces. 

They both notice the Gallifreyan circling the dome of the control room at the same time, and Rose knows the TARDIS doesn't translate Gallifreyan, but she thinks she knows what it says, becaus it's still radiating through her body. River looks back at her, surprised, when Rose cradles her cheek in one hand, and she knows somehow that she's not just speaking for herself when she says it out loud: "I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself." She stops, looks up at that timepiece-shaped script, starts again, voice soft. "I said that to him. After I looked into the TARDIS. I'd never been able to remember that before now." Something occurs to her, and she studies River. "How does that work for you? How'd you create yourself? And what's with the timey-timey story of your life?" 

River laughs, intimately, and leans so close, almost kissing her. "Rose Tyler," her lips brush against Rose's when she whispers, looking into her own eyes with those glorious green ones, "you are singularly magnificent. He was so right about you." 

She blushes all over her body, and her heart's picking up again just at the smell of her skin, that wonderful, skilled mouth so close to hers. "You sure it's not "simultaneously magnificent", bein' all timey and stuff?" It's meant to be funny, but she's too breathless and feels like a schoolgirl all over again. 

Her laugh rings through the control room. "Who couldn't fall in love with you, Rose Tyler?" 

She's beginning to get the rhythm of this. It's like with him, but more sexual. "You didn't answer my question." 

The smile against her mouth grows wider. "It's a long story." 

She gestures to the humming control room. "I got a time machine." 

River wraps her arms around her back, slides her hands under Rose's ass. Her back arches almost reflexively as her body throbs, and Rose has to fight back a gasp. She notices traces of telepathic energy still swirling around them. "Mmm, truer words. But I want to check on something first." She grins, a shit-eating grin that's pure Time Lord and makes her heart skip a beat. "We need to take her for a test flight." 

"I thought we just did that." She twitches an eyebrow, smirking, winding her arms around River's neck again. 

"Oh, sweetie, if you think _that_ was flying... Do I have a surprise for you." Unexpectedly, she lifts Rose off the console, and Rose can't hold in the sound she makes at the sudden motion, tightening her legs around River's waist again. She's trying not to squirm at the promise in her voice, can't quite hold still, feeling her fingernails scratching against her skin, her fingertips digging in. 

"Think I might die, if it's much more intense than what just happened." She admits, silently grateful that River picked her up, because she can't completely feel her legs yet. 

"Oh, trust me, it is, and you won't." River's smile is wicked. "Sex is just the best telepathic catalyst in the universe." She looks around the newly-activated TARDIS. "Ain't it, old girl? And we've got plenty of both to spare." She turns her gaze back to Rose and winks. "Best thing about human women." 

Rose swears she feels both TARDISes pulse back in amused response, and blushes. She is barely twenty-five, and she's worn John out plenty of times, half Time Lord or no, and she's more than ready to keep going, as long as she doesn't have to stand. Then something else clicks, and she has to ask. "Wait, so if you brought a piece of the TARDIS through the Void, and because a piece of infinity is infinity, you brought the TARDIS through with you, and she used it to activate the telepathic field remotely, does that mean--" 

"That there's an opening through the Void and into our universe? Yes." There's something distinctly amused in her voice. "The TARDIS does like to close those, though." 

"But that means we..." River arches an eyebrow expectantly. "We... blew a hole through the universe?" She's trying not to giggle like a teenager. It's been a while since she was a teenager, it feels like. Suddenly, it feels a lot closer than it's been in a long time. 

"Yes." 

She can't hold back the giggles, and it makes her feel less silly when River laughs with her. When she can breathe again, she says, "I know you're good with your hands, River, but... Please tell me how you're gonna beat that." 

River arches an eyebrow. "Well, I've never met a challenge I can refuse. But first, I think we need to check on these engines, see if we can even fuel them in this universe. Any luck, and she'll be able to use time energy from this universe just as readily as our universe of origin, being grown here. And then we can take her out on a test run." Another flicker of the eyebrow. "Gotta keep her going." 

Rose laughs out loud, and in the echo, she can hear both of the TARDISes laugh, too. Then, suddenly, she sobers, places one hand on River's cheek. River smiles back at her, just a little questioning. Her question tumbles out. "... Stay? Not for long or anything, just a couple days. John'll be back in three or four days from the UN. You'd love 'im. We can take 'im out on a test flight. In the TARDIS, I mean. He'd love that." It was entirely unplanned, actually totally against the plan she'd had only a little while before that, but she's more shocked at how natural it feels. 

There's such delight in River's laugh, it's almost tangible, or maybe that's still the telepathic field. And familiarity, too, like she knows exactly what Rose means from firsthand knowledge. And she supposes she does, in a sense. "I'm sure he would." She considers. "Alright." She leans in to kiss her again, and before their lips touch, she hears her murmur, "His turn to be jealous of me." 

That's something part of Rose finds _very_ appealing. 

"Did you know he never had sex with John? He was so angry at the time. He's been kicking himself for that ever since. He's a Time Lord with a TARDIS and he can't fuck himself without putting a hole in the space-time continuum." 

"Bet you always win arguments with him, though. Bet he _hates_ that." 

"Oh, yes." 

They're never getting off the ground, at this rate.


End file.
